Very few would ever doubt their commitment to Mitzvah observance.
They go the extra mile to make sure that every ‘t’ is crossed and every ‘i’ dotted
in every ritual they perform. And express great joy in doing so. They probably spend more time – and money – on Hidur
Mitzvah than most any other segment of Orthodox Jewry.
And they go to great lengths to shelter themselves from all
the negative influences of society. That is what being a Chasid is all about.
Which is why the story in the New York Times is so sad… and why I hate writing
about it.
But when a member of one segment of Orthodox Jewry messes up
- it reflects poorly on all of Orthodox Jewry. So I must protest it when it
happens. I do so again here.
The New York Times reports that Rabbi Leib Glanz, a
prominent member of the Satmar community pleaded guilty to “stealing more than
$220,000 over 15 years in housing subsidies from the Section 8 program, which
is intended to assist low-income people.”
The question is the following: How is it possible that a man
who is so intimately involved in Gemilas Chasodim – acts of kindness - capable
of knowingly stealing from the government? People who are involved constantly
in acts of kindness tend to be good people all the way around?!
The fact is that Rabbi Glanz is a Baal Chesed. He goes out
of his way for the Jewish people. During his tenure as a chaplain for the New
York City jails he had helped a religious inmate arrange a lavish jailhouse bar
mitzvah for the inmate’s son. I wrote about the incident at the time. I believe that the negative publicity of that excess is what led
to his dismissal as a chaplain. But he saw nothing wrong with that. He saw it
as helping a fellow Jew who was “Nebech” in prison.
I am not judging that particular event here. The point is
that his goal was to help a fellow Jew that he saw in dire straits. And that
was the goal with this fraud. He wanted to help his Yeshiva. From the New York
Times:
Prosecutors had charged that the rabbi’s brother was approved for federal subsidies in the mid-1990s so that he, his wife and two children could reside in a duplex apartment at 85 Ross Street in Brooklyn. He listed his income at $6,630 and submitted annual paperwork certifying that he lived at the address, the government said.
But in fact, he lived elsewhere and Rabbi Glanz lived in the apartment, according to a criminal complaint filed last year by the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.
The complaint said the housing subsidies were paid to the apartment’s owner, the United Talmudical Academy, where Rabbi Glanz worked and for a time was executive director.
In court, Rabbi Glanz told Judge P. Kevin Castel that in 1996 through 2000, he signed several contracts with the New York City Housing Authority, which administered the Section 8 program for the federal government, for benefits to be paid to the academy on the basis that his brother would live in the apartment.
Rabbi Glantz did this knowing full well it was illegal and he
admitted as much. He knew he was wrong and did it anyway.
I wish I could say that this is an anomaly. …that this is the
exception that proves the rule that Chasidim from Satmar-like communities would
never cheat the government so purposefully and so directly. This was not a
simple tax evasion case. This was a fraud! But Rabbi Glanz is proabably not
seen as a criminal in the eyes of his own community.
I’m pretty sure they will see him as a hero – who got caught.
They will say that what he did was not so wrong since that money ordinarily gets
spent on the ‘dregs’ of society anyway. Why shouldn’t ‘we’ get a chunk of it …by
hook or by crook?! Why shouldn’t the Yeshivos of Satmar benefit from funds that
would otherwise be wasted on unwed mothers, drug addicts, and other ‘low-lifes’?!
I wish it weren’t so. But I have heard this kind of
statement coming out of their circles more times than I can count.
I’m sure there will be much denial. And I will once again be
accused of bashing Satmar. But I am not. I get no joy in reading stories like
this or writing about them. The facts speak for themselves.
He admiited that he
knew it was wrong. But by wrong he means illegal. I am absolutely convinced
that he also thought that this fraud was a perfectly fine thing to do as a Jew to
help out his people. People who in many cases are desperately poor and cannot
afford to pay for their children’s education. Why not use these government subsidies
to help subsidize them?
This is not the Jewish way. I’ve said this before. Satmar
and like minded Chasidim live in communities that are isolated from the rest of
society and its values. They reject
those values. They are indoctrinated to see the government in much the same way
that their grandparents saw their pre-Holocaust anti-Semitic European
governments… as something to take advantage of in any way they can.
One can perhaps justify that under a Czar that kept these
communities poor and persecuted them all the time with pogroms and blood
libels. Perhaps they had no other way to survive accept to find ways ‘under the
table’. Black markets thrived in those communities
Somehow, even though it should be obvious to them that the
US is different, they have retained the mindset that it’s OK to cheat “the
Goyim” - if they can get away with it. And that is what causes the kind of
Chilul HaShem that is happening here. And when the criminal is someone who is
otherwise a good person, the Chilul HaShem is even greater.
I believe that this is what happened here. It was also the
motivation when Rabbi Glanz helped that Jewish inmate hold a lavish Bar Mitzvah
for his son. Perhaps he could be forgiven for that since he did not do anything
technically illegal. But the underlying kindness for ones brothers should never
be translated into fraud. That is apparently a lesson yet to be learned by this
community!
